Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/334

The Hvpostyle Hall of Xerxes. seat, figures making up a design whose oldest examples are found in Assyria. Above the throne we have placed a sumptuous and ample canopy of broidered work (Plate IV.), furnished from that which the artist has chiselled about the doorways of the Hall of a Hundred Columns (Fig. 156). Considered as a whole, the central pavilion, as we have restored it (Plate V.), is no more than this same canopy enlarged. The two slender uprights of metal or gilt wood have been turned into a vast grove of gigantic pillars, the ceiling they uphold and maintain in mid-air is placed so high as to Fig. 155.— The throne of the shah, Flandin and CosTE, Perst atuUnne, Plate XXXH. make details adorning it barely perceptible to the naked eye ; none the less this enormous wood loft plays here the part of the small square pieces to which was nailed the light drapery of the royal awning, and which attendants carried whenever the king took his walks abroad, so as to spread it over his head if it should please him to rest awhile. These hangings must have assumed colossal proportions in the throne-room. In the upper part of the entab- lature modillions were distributed around the building, whose salience beyond the columns was inadequate per se to screen the royal person from the burning sun of noon. Hence between him and the multitudes pressing into the hall, open to the four winds of heaven, a veil was needed reaching at least down to the middle of the shaft, which, without intercepting the view, should